Biden’s “Gaffe”

 

Journalist, Michael Kinsley once quipped that “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”

Years ago, I posted a thought – I don’t remember now about what – on a blog site, and I got a reaction that surprised me. The responder said that he didn’t know how to reply because he didn’t know anything about me or my background. That made no sense to me at the time. Obviously, one replied by citing facts and offering logic that supported or contradicted my statements. What else?

What I understand now is that the gentleman had no intention of dealing with my argument, he was looking for reasons to dismiss it. If he could fit me into some sort of category – age, sex, skin color, religion – he could claim that my beliefs were dictated by my personal interests as defined by my category. At that point, having discredited my motives, he could ignore whatever argument I’d made without having to deal with the argument itself.

Joe Biden, woke-ish progressive that he is, thinks in those same terms: Your demographics dictate – or should dictate – your personal interests, which, in turn, dictate your beliefs. And, in Biden’s mind, “African Americans” are a homogeneous category rather than a convenient label placed on different people with different desires, ideas, and goals. In Biden’s mind, the category, “African Americans,” is one that is dependent on government handouts, so its interests are best served by voting for the party of government handouts.

Biden’s gaffe revealed the truth, not about African Americans, but about how he views them.

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  1. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    What’s the over/under on hw many times Biden has to use the “I was only joking” excuse? 

    • #1
  2. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Hoyacon (View Comment): What’s the over/under on hw many times Biden has to use the “I was only joking” excuse?

    I’ll take the over.

    • #2
  3. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    The Dems still consider blacks to belong on their (the Dems) plantation. And that’s how they treat them.

    • #3
  4. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    The other thing here is that the Democratic Party’s agenda is centered so much nowadays on special interest carve-outs that all the various factions know it and push to have their agenda at the forefront in some sort of reverse victimhood effort. When you go back 45-plus years to when Biden first entered the Senate, there was no question that civil rights issues surrounding African-American voters were the primary focus of the Democrats’ social agenda, but it’s really not as clear now.

    Other groups pushing for their own civil rights legislation based not simply on race, but on sex or gender identity, have carved out more and more of the Democrats’ top spots on their agenda list, in part because people in some of those groups have more money to donate to the left’s political campaigns and pet causes, or are more wired into the Dems’ urban intellectual elite network and have been access to try and present themselves as the alpha victims, in need of the most focus from the party.

    And black voters have noticed in recent years, too, that if they say the wrong thing about the wrong group, woke cancel culture will come after them. Toss in the chum of the far left’s big government agenda, like AOC’s Green New Deal, and there’s less and less focus within the Democratic Party on trying to solve the problems in the African-American community, at the same time they continue to take for granted they’re going to get 90-95 percent of that vote each election.

    Biden’s comment comes from a 1970s or 1980s mindset, but the black voters he takes for granted see that it’s 2020, and a lot of their issues have metaphorically been shoved to the back of the bus by the Democrats’ leadership, which assumes their votes as a given, but doesn’t assume that for the campaign donations from other groups, made up in many cases of white, upper-middle class or rich urban elites who’ve claimed victimhood for themselves.

    • #4
  5. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Black liberals have always called black conservatives Uncle Toms or sellouts. The Left’s favorite tactic is trying to shame others into agreement. But when a white guy says it? No.

    • #5
  6. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    Black liberals have always called black conservatives Uncle Toms or sellouts. The Left’s favorite tactic is trying to shame others into agreement. But when a white guy says it? No.

    Thomas Sowell is, perhaps, America’s greatest living economist, philosopher, and historian.  He’s been made a “non-person” by a Left that doesn’t want to have to deal with his arguments.

    • #6
  7. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    The responder said that he didn’t know how to reply because he didn’t know anything about me or my background. 

    This is standard behavior these days. I think leftists are so terrified of accidentally agreeing with one of “THEM” that they feel like they have to vet others before betraying themselves. You see this on Reddit every day.  Leftists reply to comments by informing the person that “I checked your comment history, and I see you routinely comment in support of the alt-right” etc. (and of course, by “alt-right,” they mean “normal mainstream person who thinks there are two sexes), so you are wrong.”

    • #7
  8. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    The responder said that he didn’t know how to reply because he didn’t know anything about me or my background.

    This is standard behavior these days. I think leftists are so terrified of accidentally agreeing with one of “THEM” that they feel like they have to vet others before betraying themselves. You see this on Reddit every day. Leftists reply to comments by informing the person that “I checked your comment history, and I see you routinely comment in support of the alt-right” etc. (and of course, by “alt-right,” they mean “normal mainstream person who thinks there are two sexes), so you are wrong.”

    Not so coincidentally, if you see an angry leftist on Disqus fuming at everyone else for being neither as smart nor as caring as they are, odds are probably better than 50-50 they have their comment history blocked, so people can’t call them on their past statements or attacks.

    • #8
  9. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    One thing that Joe Bidet said that underlines his You Ain’t Black challenge:

    All people in prison have these three things in common:

    1) They come from abusive homes (spec. where the prisoner or his mother was abused);

    2) They can’t read; and

    3) They have no job skills because they have been frozen out.

    Therefore, they need public housing upon leaving prison, and everything the government has to offer.

    This is more detailed and more prejudiced and more revealing than simply saying, Vote for me or you’re not black.

    • #9
  10. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    My take away from the interview and subsequent interviews of Charlemagne was that Blacks were not going to vote for Trump, that they were going to vote for Biden lest Trump be reelected, and wanted to push for a (militant) black (woman) as VP (and likely future president) with a weak “or else” to Biden attached.

    • #10
  11. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Flicker (View Comment):

    My take away from the interview and subsequent interviews of Charlemagne was that Blacks were not going to vote for Trump, that they were going to vote for Biden lest Trump be reelected, and wanted to push for a (militant) black (woman) as VP (and likely future president) with a weak “or else” to Biden attached.

    Funny how voting for blacks because the are black is not racist.  But if you voted for a white for any reason we that is.  

    • #11
  12. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    Richard Fulmer: In Biden’s mind, the category, “African Americans,” is one that is dependent on government handouts, so its interests are best served by voting for the party of government handouts.

    Liberals seem to have extra disdain for people who don’t fit neatly into their predetermined categories. So, conservative black people and pro-life women are a threat because the whole “think for themselves” mindset blows up their stereotypes 

    • #12
  13. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):
    Funny how voting for blacks because the are black is not racist. But if you voted for a white for any reason we that is.

    Blacks (they say) are a different type.  They all have different needs and resultantly have different expectations.  Charlemagne referred off-handedly to “America’s original sin” of Slavery, and agreed that Blacks’ higher morbidity to SARS CoV 2 is due to “systemic racism”.  In the minds of some (or most?) Blacks, they all really are a separate, excluded and injured group — and I’ll say that, yes, in some ways they are, but not nearly as much as they say, and many Blacks’ lives are not actually significantly hampered by racism, and Blacks really can vote themselves out of their Democrat-contrived “plantation” if they corporately choose to, with the proper leadership (I’m thinking off the top of my head of Baltimore, here) and still, world-wide, Blacks want more than anything to come to America, despite any and all actual racism and rational considerations of the threat of racism.

    Because America is not that racist, compared to most other countries.

    The US has a “Black” subculture, largely formed as a result of the Great Society (which is still affecting them today), that prevents them from taking advantage of the great privileges and opportunities of being American citizens.  Foreign blacks don’t hold to this stigma, and thrive despite it.

    • #13
  14. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Bob Johnson, a very smart guy, former owner of the Charlotte Hornets, and founder of a media empire, has been highly critical of Biden.  He’s made it on his own,  growing up in Hickory Mississippi with nine brothers and sisters to be our first African-American billionaire.  You’d think there’d be a lesson there.

    • #14
  15. Paul Erickson Inactive
    Paul Erickson
    @PaulErickson

    The tell is whenever someone starts their comment with words to the effect, “Speaking as a queer, afro-asian etc. . .”

    • #15
  16. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    What struck me about that interaction was how quickly Biden interrupted the young man as soon as he (Biden) realized that there was going to be a counter to his own campaign positions, that he was actually going to be pressed for more in depth commentary and ‘just about Trump’ was not going to carry the day. That is typical Biden.

    • #16
  17. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Flicker (View Comment):
    The US has a “Black” subculture, largely formed as a result of the Great Society (which is still affecting them today), that prevents them from taking advantage of the great privileges and opportunities of being American citizens. Foreign blacks don’t hold to this stigma, and thrive despite it.

    Growing up in Manhattan in the 1960s and 70s, one of the very noticeable things with the liberals of the post-Great Society era was that even if their hearts were in the right place in wanting to end poverty in the black community, as opposed to cynically create an ongoing culture of government dependency, they fell into a tendency to refuse to criticize or even celebrate all forms of (mainly urban) black culture, including by the 70s forms that were detrimental to avoiding the culture of dependency.

    The ultimate version of that was captured by Tom Wolfe in “Radical Chic”, with his description of Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue party for the Black Panthers. But it’s devolved and spread out over the past 50 years into being unable to even note that celebrating the violence and misogyny in the gangsta hip-hop culture might not be the best thing for young blacks, or by now young people of any racial demographic, to see as role models (and of course it was interesting that while lots of people supposedly knew about Bill Cosby’s shenanigans with women since at least the 1980s, he didn’t lose his pop culture immunity from it until he started criticizing the celebration of that type of culture by modern media, over emphasizing getting an education and breaking the culture of dependency).

    • #17
  18. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):
    The US has a “Black” subculture, largely formed as a result of the Great Society (which is still affecting them today), that prevents them from taking advantage of the great privileges and opportunities of being American citizens. Foreign blacks don’t hold to this stigma, and thrive despite it.

    Growing up in Manhattan in the 1960s and 70s, one of the very noticeable things with the liberals of the post-Great Society era was that even if their hearts were in the right place in wanting to end poverty in the black community, as opposed to cynically create an ongoing culture of government dependency, they fell into a tendency to refuse to criticize or even celebrate all forms of (mainly urban) black culture, including by the 70s forms that were detrimental to avoiding the culture of dependency.

    The ultimate version of that was captured by Tom Wolfe in “Radical Chic”, with his description of Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue party for the Black Panthers. But it’s devolved and spread out over the past 50 years into being unable to even note that celebrating the violence and misogyny in the gangsta hip-hop culture might not be the best thing for young blacks, or by now young people of any racial demographic, to see as role models (and of course it was interesting that while lots of people supposedly knew about Bill Cosby’s shenanigans with women since at least the 1980s, he didn’t lose his pop culture immunity from it until he started criticizing the celebration of that type of culture by modern media, over emphasizing getting an education and breaking the culture of dependency).

    Do abortions of babies from the inner city, New York,  fit into story somewhere? I understand those numbers are significant.

    • #18
  19. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):
    The US has a “Black” subculture, largely formed as a result of the Great Society (which is still affecting them today), that prevents them from taking advantage of the great privileges and opportunities of being American citizens. Foreign blacks don’t hold to this stigma, and thrive despite it.

    Growing up in Manhattan in the 1960s and 70s, one of the very noticeable things with the liberals of the post-Great Society era was that even if their hearts were in the right place in wanting to end poverty in the black community, as opposed to cynically create an ongoing culture of government dependency, they fell into a tendency to refuse to criticize or even celebrate all forms of (mainly urban) black culture, including by the 70s forms that were detrimental to avoiding the culture of dependency.

    The ultimate version of that was captured by Tom Wolfe in “Radical Chic”, with his description of Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue party for the Black Panthers. But it’s devolved and spread out over the past 50 years into being unable to even note that celebrating the violence and misogyny in the gangsta hip-hop culture might not be the best thing for young blacks, or by now young people of any racial demographic, to see as role models (and of course it was interesting that while lots of people supposedly knew about Bill Cosby’s shenanigans with women since at least the 1980s, he didn’t lose his pop culture immunity from it until he started criticizing the celebration of that type of culture by modern media, over emphasizing getting an education and breaking the culture of dependency).

    Do abortions of babies from the inner city, New York, fit into story somewhere? I understand those numbers are significant.

    New York State did legalize abortions prior to Roe, though IIRC,  the supporters focused mainly on the unsafe nature of ‘back alley abortions’ and didn’t say anything about social engineering (the same types today are fighting hospital accreditation laws for abortionists).

    • #19
  20. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Will blacks ever get tired of the “Uncle Tom” and now the “You ain’t black if” labels?

    • #20
  21. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    Do abortions of babies from the inner city, New York, fit into story somewhere? I understand those numbers are significant.

    It, the culture of death, goes hand in hand with the culture of violence and misogyny.

    • #21
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